Use Facebook To Pick Your Seatmate On Your Next 5 Hour Flight!

Sound intriguing? Well KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has announced a new program for passengers letting them upload information from social networking platforms Facebook and LinkedIn so that they can match themselves up with other ticketholders. We would assume the hope is to avoid sitting next to an overly chatty or unappealing person.

The program is called “Meet and Seat” and passengers who opt in choose what kind of information they want to share. That information is only viewable to other passengers on that flight who have opted in. If the choosing passenger selects a seatmate, the seatmate will receive a message including a link to the choosing passenger’s profile. This option is currently only available to passengers flying between Amsterdam and New York or between San Francisco and São Paulo but KLM is planning to expand it to all international flights very soon.

What do you think? Would you volunteer your information? While the idea of sitting next to someone that you have potential shared interests with is promising, it could also turn into dread when twenty minutes into the flight you find out they have been super excited to meet you and counting the days until the flight. From a female perspective, I think there could be hesitation to jump on board with the concept for fear of sitting next to a guy who sees the flight as a potential five hour first date. Who knows, maybe they can get a sponsorship deal from Match.com…

Do you think this idea will take flight with travelers or fall to the wayside as another creative attempt that didn’t stick to integrate social into the business?